Consulting major PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is betting on eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) as one of the key technologies to be rapidly adopted in the near future.
In its recently released ’Technology Forecast’ of the worldwide IT industry, it says that XBRL will significantly change business reporting in the coming years. It is an electronic format for simplifying the flow of financial statements, performance reports, accounting records and other financial information between software programs.
Generally, exchanging information across systems is hampered by the lack of a common standard and often specialised software is required to convert data from one format to another. XBRL, a standard supported by a consortium of 200 organisations, defines a consistent format for business reporting. Certain leading stock exchange have begun to accept filing using this format.
Other technologies, which the consulting major is bullish about, include business intelligence systems, business integration technologies, supply chain event management capabilities and expanded use of XML.
Business intelligence has evolved from a processor of historial data to monitor individual transaction and real-time business information, the report said. It enables the firms to study key performance indicators and analyse them.
Another key niche, the report said, is business integration technologies. These technologies have evolved as a step further than enterprise application integration, which is generally used to integrate disparate systems. Through the use of this technology, the response time of the system can be crashed.
The supply chain event management capabilities is another area, which is showing a lot of promise, the report said.
